The Gog and Magog Prophecy Dismantles Christian Anti-Zionism

Twenty-five years ago, the debate over Israel’s right to exist did not exist in my circles of Christian friends. I only learned what Zionism and anti-Zionism meant a couple of years ago, writing for this outlet and reading on the subject inside and outside the Blogs.

A few months ago, a good Christian friend of mine, while we were arguing about who were the good guys and who were the bad guys in this war, told me: “They can live in any country in the world.” I disagreed with her immediately, but since I did not want to fight with my friend, I decided not to press the debate any further. Still, I learned a new argument that circulates in the minds of those who consider themselves Christian anti-Zionists and not antisemites at the same time. I will approach this subject from a philosophical perspective, examining some of the ontological attributes of God and the Gog and Magog prophecy in Ezekiel 38.

There was another conversation, with an acquaintance, also a Christian. He was telling me about the civilian casualties in Gaza and I understood his point, but I added layers of nuance: the human shields, the tunnels that were never built to protect the population, October 7 as the beginning of this conflict. He did not refute any of it directly. He preferred to move back in time and talk about 1948. I could also have kept going back, to Romans 11, or a thousand years earlier, to the Abrahamic covenant. There are debates where no matter what you say, you will not change the other person’s mind.

This debate has more angles and more nuance, and I could write about them. On this occasion I am focusing solely on this passage from the book of Ezekiel. Nor will I go into the differences between Christian eschatological positions, such as supersessionism, preterism and dispensationalism. I write as someone with a Christian worldview, addressing others who share that worldview in its main foundations.

Let us begin with the prophecy. To start with, it has not been fulfilled in history. This prophecy must be interpreted literally. The actors are specifically named, and so are the actions and the intentions. If a prophecy speaks of a people invaded from the four cardinal points by enemy nations, it is because that people is located on certain coordinates on a map. In Ezekiel 38, the arrows point toward Israel, not toward the Mediterranean or anywhere else. And if the prophecy has not yet been fulfilled, it is because it will be fulfilled one day, near or far.

So we have an unfulfilled prophecy in which Israel is the center. How could Jews live scattered around the world and the Gog and Magog prophecy be fulfilled at the same time? There is no room for an allegorical reading either. The prophecy has a very detailed structure, almost technical. No scholar has demonstrated that it was already fulfilled in the past. No such event exists in history.

The prophecy ends with the invading armies destroyed miraculously by God before they achieve their purpose. Here comes the philosophical part. God is Almighty. He can bend the physical and natural laws He Himself created, and alter the course of nature at will, always with a specific purpose: to show us that He is God. He parted the Red Sea, He pulverized Sodom and Gomorrah, He brought down the walls of Jericho. Reading Ezekiel 38, you will find a terrible ending for those armies.

“And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord God: every man’s sword shall be against his brother. And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord.” (Ezekiel 38:21-23)

Another of God’s attributes is His perfect justice. Otherwise, He could not be God. And an impersonal force could not be God either. A god, perhaps, but not God. That justice explains the ending of the passage: the text says that Gog conceives an evil thought and comes up against a people at rest, for spoil and plunder. There is no prior grievance. There is no retaliation. Israel provoked nothing.

The prophet Ezekiel saw what he saw and wrote it down. He was the means through which God chose to leave a written record of this prophecy. Nor is there any need to dwell on God’s omniscience when He revealed to Ezekiel an event that would occur in the future. It was not Ezekiel’s task to inquire beyond what had been entrusted to him. God, being omniscient, knows everything. Past, present and future. He has absolute knowledge of all things.

Finally, we see the fulfillment of a promise. God always keeps His promises. He disciplines and He punishes, but He always keeps them. Otherwise, He could not be God. How can you reconcile your anti-Zionist position with divine ontology and with Scripture at the same time?

The problem with anti-Zionism is that in the world we live in, it means the disappearance of a nation and of a people. Here another attribute comes in: divine sovereignty. God did as He pleased with Nebuchadnezzar. He also judged more than one king of Israel when He deemed it necessary, and He sent His own people into exile. Ezekiel wrote from that exile. God’s dealings with human beings are personal in the end. He can do whatever He wants, whenever He wants, however He wants.

The other details of the Gog and Magog prophecy are not part of this discussion. Nor will we go into the comparison with the war of the same name in Revelation 20, because they are two wars with completely different characteristics.

I still do not understand anti-Zionism within Christianity. I do not even know why I have to use the words Zionist and anti-Zionist to refer to Christians. Political undertones come in here as well. But they should not forget that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He will, as Daniel 4:17 says.

And there is something that amplifies the problem. Figures with enormous audiences, such as Tucker Carlson, spread this position within the Christian community. A single interview of his reaches further than every response that can be given to it.
And one more scenario remains: antisemitism. You arrive there by deliberately ignoring this evidence, without pausing to consider it for a moment. At that precise point, anti-Zionism as a political movement within the Christian community becomes antisemitism. Simply put, for one reason or another, that Christian dislikes Jews.

That same acquaintance told me something else: that Jews take advantage of the support they receive from Christians, but deep down feel contempt toward us. I do not believe that is true of all of them. And even if it were, I would not care. Neither did Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch watchmaker who hid Jews behind a false wall in her house in Haarlem. They were betrayed. Her father Casper died ten days after the arrest. Her sister Betsie died in Ravensbrück in December 1944. Neither did Pastor André Trocmé and the people of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a Huguenot town of about five thousand inhabitants that hid and smuggled out of France between three thousand and five thousand Jews. Daniel Trocmé, the pastor’s cousin, ran a boarding school there. When the Gestapo arrived he was not in the building and could have escaped. He went back to his Jewish students. He died in Majdanek in 1944, at the age of 34. None of them asked first whether Jews appreciated Christians enough.

What is written is written, and in prophetic matters nothing we want or do will change what God has already decided. Why? Because God is eternal. He created time. He stands outside of time. The passage in Ezekiel 38 gives us more than the description of an event that has not yet come to pass: it tells us about several attributes of an immutable God. A political movement will never stand above that.

My friend was right about one thing. Jews can live in any country in the world. They did so for twenty centuries. But in no other country in the world can Ezekiel 38 be fulfilled.